Make a Cheap and Sturdy DIY Vegetable Garden Box Out of Old Boards

Before and After: Don't Fence Me In

These tired-looking redwood boards were left over after my friends replaced a section of their backyard fencing. While they were full of rusty screws and were only half an inch thick, I saw potential.

Curious about what I did with this old redwood fence? Find out what happened to it when you read more.

I made another garden box out of them! Because I was concerned about the relative thinness of the boards, I doubled them up for each side, and then added a single board halfway down the doubled sides. I also used four-by-four redwood posts for the corners, which were left over from another garden-box project.
The most time-intensive part of this project was turning the soil, which was really impacted from years of use as a lawn. Then, I had to sink the four-by-four corner posts into the soil, and level the entire box. After filling the box with some rich soil, I planted strawberries, artichoke, and other seedlings that I'd already started. I'm pretty pleased with the results, and also happy that I was able to reuse wood that might've ended up in a garbage dump somewhere.

My boyfriend accidentally cracked a post in my neighbor's fence with the lawnmower, and replaced it with a new one. Instead of throwing the cracked one away, he cut it into four pieces and made a small plant box around the base of my mailbox with it.